About Abigail Otis

Marriages and Deaths in the 20 March 1790 issue of the Massachusetts Centinel

Thursday about noon. After a tedious illness, in the fifteenth year of her age, departed this life, Miss Abigail Otis, daughter of the Secretary of the Senate of the United States. - This is a second instance within a short period, in which the connections of the family are called to deplore the loss of a most lovely and amiable young lady in the morning of life, adorned with every female virtue and accomplishment. The funeral will be this afternoon at 4 o'clock, when relations, friends and acquaintance of the family are requested to attend, with no further notice or invitation.

Abigail Otis, daughter of Samuel A. Otis, secretary of the Senate, and his first wife, Elizabeth Gray Otis, died 18 March at age sixteen. Her elder sister Elizabeth had died less than two years earlier, also after a long illness (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 14:472, 475; New York Gazette of the United States, 31 March; Boston Gazette, 25 Aug. 1788).